


The Galactic Adventures of Major Zeph

by winterover



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Costumes, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff, M/M, San Diego Comic-Con, Sewing, Sharing a Bed, harrison ford kind of, loving mom winona, nerd lyfe, this fic is canon-compliant!?, thor!george
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 09:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9175135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterover/pseuds/winterover
Summary: Jim is a comic book nerd who’s finally found his one true sidekick. Leonard is a convention virgin who really needs a drink. There is only one bed left in San Diego.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kinderjedi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinderjedi/gifts).



**The Galactic Adventures of Major Zeph**

 

*** 

_Hi, Mom. Thanks for sending the box. Everything inside is fine. I’m bouncing a few ideas around for the spring -- I think I’m almost settled on something, but it depends on how Bones (my roommate, the cranky M.D.) feels about it. It’d work better in a duo, and I just have a feeling about him. I’ll give you three guesses, see if you get it right. Anyway, I’ll send you a holo when I have something concrete. Love, Jim._

***

Leonard’s running later than he prefers to be this morning. He pulls on his uniform jacket, does up the clasps - every day the damn thing just feels more and more constricting; he doesn’t know if it’s just him and all the Academy-mandated physical fitness tests he’s been working out for, or if the laundry’s done something nefarious to all his clothes - and reaches down to pick up his bag.

_Rrriiiiiiip._

He freezes, horrified. “Was that me?”

“Uh,” says Jim, blinking over the top of his padd. His thick eyebrows fly up. “Yeah, it was you. Your jacket’s kinda...” His expression turns to one of pained amusement.

When Leonard straightens up, something goes _rip_ again, just a little. But it’s enough to send him scurrying into the bathroom, turning so his back is facing the full-length mirror and peering over his shoulder to inspect the damage as best he can. Sure enough, there’s a four-inch-long vertical tear right between his scapulae, a big sliver of the white tee he’s got on underneath peeking starkly through to say hello. There’s no way he can go out like this and not get written up by the first officer he happens to step in front of.

“Well, shit,” he says. “My seminar’s in fifteen minutes.”

“Go get changed, Bones, you’re gonna be late,” Jim says unhelpfully as he appears in the doorway to survey the carnage.

“I don’t _have_ anything to change into,” Leonard snaps, twisting and contorting himself into a pretzel as he tries to reach the rip with both hands and pull it closed. It’s in an awkward location - that spot you can never reach, neither over nor under, when you’ve got an itch. Maybe he could glue it together with medical adhesive from his kit and it’d hold for the day, but it wouldn’t be pretty and probably still wouldn’t meet the uniform code. “I sent three sets off to the laundry day before yesterday, and then I spilled coffee all over myself last night. This was my last clean one.”

“You can borrow mine. We’re the same height.”

Leonard snorts at the idea. “I wouldn’t be able to get yours closed.”

Jim strolls all the way into the bathroom, pushes Leonard’s hands away, and turns him to examine his back. Leonard watches his face in fascination in the mirror, an uncharacteristic look of peaceful contemplation settling onto Jim’s features, like he’s taking his time working out an interesting puzzle in his head. “Then give it to me, I’ll fix it,” he says unexpectedly, and Leonard turns to stare at him properly.

“You’ll do what now? If you’re thinking of gluing it, I was already gonna -”

“Fuck, no. Glue? What’s wrong with you?” Jim is already unhooking his collar with his nimble fingers, progressing down his chest. Leonard, bewildered, just stands there and lets him, like a four-year-old. “You’ve got no sense of aesthetics.” He shoves the jacket down off Leonard’s shoulders, then tugs at his sleeves, and Leonard gets with the picture and pulls it the rest of the way off himself, handing it over. “Thank _you._ I’ll be fast. The seam just opened up, that’s all.”

“I’ve got literally four minutes before I have to run, Jim,” Leonard warns him, trailing him back out into their shared living space and watching him open his second-from-the-top desk drawer and pull out a mysterious-looking black plastic box. Jim just looks up and flashes him a sunny white grin.

“Don’t worry. I’ll do it in three.”

Jim sits down, produces an honest-to-God needle and a spool of close-enough red thread from the box, and proceeds to turns the jacket inside out, spread it out over his knees and fucking _sew_ the seam shut with the tiniest, most even hand stitching Leonard’s ever seen in his damn life.

True to his word, Jim’s done in under three minutes. “Put it on, I wanna make sure it’s not puckered,” he says, standing and holding out the jacket, and Leonard mutely slips into it and does it up, still struggling to comprehend this turn of events, the parameters of the file in his normally well-ordered head labeled _Kirk, James T._ shifting and expanding to accommodate this new revelation. Boy genius. Knuckle-bruiser. Lothario. Rebel with a cause. Skilled at delicate tailoring work.

He feels Jim’s hand smoothing down his spine, and stands up a little straighter, hyper-aware of his habitually slouched posture. “Okay, you’re good. Get outta here, and tell the quartermaster to issue you a size bigger.”

Leonard lets out a short laugh as he shakes his head and gingerly bends over to pick up his bag, this time without any unfortunate incidents. “Jim Kirk, you are somethin’ else.”

Jim just shrugs modestly, eyes bright with the satisfaction of a job well done. “What can I say. I’m a man of infinite mystery.”

***

“IT’S NOTHING SHUT UP,” the man of infinite mystery yells a few days later when he hears the door slide open. There is silence from the entryway, broken only by the wailing strains of classical rock emanating from the console, then a drawled -

“Hello to you, too.”

Oh. Just Bones. Jim sighs and slumps over his desk in relief as Bones comes around the divider, drops his bag at the end of his bed and toes his boots off, kicking them away without looking. For someone so neat in the lab and the clinic, he’s about the furthest thing from spit-and-polish in their room, despite the ever-present possibility of inspections and demerits. Jim thinks it’s intentional, because he’s found that Bones is incapable of doing just about anything without the tiniest bit of _well fuck all y’all_ attached. This streak of fundamental contrarianism is probably why they get along so well. “Computer, lower volume 60%. Sorry. I thought you were Mitchell. He texted me yesterday and threatened to drop by and drag me out with him.”

“Threatened?” says Bones, eyebrow raised, as he flops onto his bed.

“Well, you know how he is. I thought he might just barge in.”

“You don’t want people to know you can sew?”

“I don’t care about _people,_ but you know _Mitchell._ He’d probably be an asshole about it.” Jim looks down, snips a little triangle out of a scrapped edge of fabric he doesn’t need, then looks back up, a little wary of what he might see. Bones is still staring, but not in a weirded-out way, just a curious one. It probably helps that he’s already been witness to Jim’s handiwork, so seeing him bent over a pile of fabric with a bunch of pins and a pair of scissors in hand doesn’t come entirely out of left field.

“What’re you making?”

“Clothes,” says Jim.

“Clothes. What kind of clothes?”

“A jacket.” Then, to head off any further questioning, he quickly adds, “I’ll show you when it’s done. It doesn’t look like much yet.”

“Sure.” Bones shrugs and rolls onto his back, opening his jacket and popping the button on his pants and sighing in relief. He really does need to requisition a whole new set of uniforms in a bigger size. Jim hasn’t known him that long, but he can tell Bones has put on some healthy bulk from Starfleet’s grueling fitness regimen and 24/7 mess hall. Or maybe this is how he’s genetically supposed to look, and he was just too thin before, not eating or not sleeping or whatever the result was of that divorce that he’s never shown any signs of wanting to talk to Jim about.

Jim’s spent a fair amount of time considering the dimensions of the good doctor’s body, actually. Visually measuring his shoulders and waist, sneaking glimpses at the comparative lengths of their arms when they stand next to each other. There’s an idea forming in his mind - a beautiful one; he would be _amazing,_ Jim can envision it - but it’s not time to broach that to Bones just yet, because he isn’t sure what kind of a response it would garner.

And he really doesn’t want to get shot down. Because if there’s ever been an Adam to his Zeph, he’s pretty sure Bones is it.

“So,” Bones says suddenly, jarring Jim out of his musings. “You never did tell me how you learned to sew.”

Jim smiles as he adjusts and pins a fold. “A needle, some thread, a lot of accidental bloody fingers.”

Bones snorts. “You know what I meant.”

“Yeah.” Jim leans back in his desk chair and rubs the back of his neck, stiff from spending the last hour hunched over his project. “I dunno. Took a few classes at the community center, looked up a lot of tutorials on the ‘net. Trial and error, I guess.” He doesn’t mention the giant crazy quilt he’d made out all the pieces of textile he’d wrecked. It’s probably still on the back of his grandma’s couch. “I like knowing how to do as many things as possible. Just in case.”

Rolling back onto his stomach, Bones pillows his chin on his folded arms and regards Jim with a weird glint of approval in his eyes. It’s disconcerting. Bones rarely looks at him with such open validation. “It’s a good skill to have. I can sew wounds shut, but I’ve never tried fabric. Ironic, huh.”

Jim shudders theatrically, though inside, he is warm with Bones’ esteem. “ _Stitches?_ Isn’t that a little barbaric?”

“Learned in a field medicine course. You don’t always have a dermal ‘gen around. Now, you really wanna know about barbaric...”

As Jim finishes cutting out his pieces, Bones proceeds to regale and distract him with the most awesomely disgusting surgical histories Jim’s ever heard. It sure beats the hell out of the Rolling Stones.

***

This becomes sort of a ritual for them. Through the week, when he’s done his assignments and flight practice and physical conditioning and TA duties and thesis work and group meetings and everything else he has to do, Jim usually spends an hour or so wherever he can working on his project by the mellow light of the desk lamp. Bones will come in from class or clinic duty or the gym or the lab or anywhere else he has to be, peek over his shoulder for a moment or two, pull out his own assignments, and Jim will happily sew away to the ambient noise of Bones muttering the questions out loud to himself as he works through them, as is his tendency. He isn’t content unless he’s talking, and Jim can’t concentrate unless there’s some kind of sound dampening the thoughts bouncing around inside his skull, so they’re really the ideal roommates. Good thing his charms had worked so well on the placement officer. They weren't even supposed to be housed on the same campus.

Jim always knows when Bones is done when he starts asking questions. “What are you working on now?” he’ll say, and Jim will answer “right sleeve” or “a pocket” or whatever it happens to be.

“Are you ever gonna be finished? You’ve been working on that for weeks,” Bones says doubtfully one Thursday night, and Jim nods, though he doesn’t look up from his work. He’s got his machine out now, a portable one he’s put together and attached to the edge of the desk. It’s fast and quiet, but it takes a lot more concentration, because one glance away and he could screw up an arm's length of stitching which he would then have to pick out by hand. Fuck that noise.

“It’ll be done in time,” he answers absently, guiding the deep blue fabric with sure hands as the needle flashes up and down, in and out. He supposes could have made this quicker and easier on himself by using fabric sealant - _not_ glue, thank you - instead of actual needles and thread. But that would mess with the authenticity. And Jim’s a big fan of authenticity.

“In time for what?”

“The time I plan to have it done by. Hey, do we have beer?”

He can hear Bones’ eyes roll, but he knows they do, just like every other dorm room does, though it’s technically against regs. “Lemme state for the record that I’m pretty sure alcohol and electrically-powered needles don’t go that well together,” Bones says as he gets up, but he brings Jim a beer anyway, and even pops it open for him, setting it on a corner of the desk far from the machine. “You ever gonna tell me what kind of a jacket it is?” he asks, opening his own beer and settling back onto his bed. “You have jackets already.”

Jim takes a long pull from his can, swishing beer around in his mouth a little before swallowing. “Air Force. United States of America Air Force.”

“You’re sewing a pre-war military getup.”

“Early twenty-first century, to be exact.”

“For…”

Jim can’t hold it in any longer. “It’s a costume. I’m making a costume, okay.”

He waits for the ribbing to begin.

It doesn’t. But the raised eyebrow is messing with his nerves, so he just goes ahead with an explanation. “Well...alright, here, look.”

He retrieves a box from his closet and brings it over to Bones’ side of the room, setting it gently down in the middle of Bones’ desk. Bones sits up, cross-legged, to watch as Jim takes the little plastimer figurines one by one from their padded box and lines them carefully up along the edge of the tabletop, like a battalion of brightly-colored soldiers protecting Bones’ writing tablet and stylus and collection of framed holos from enemy incursion.

“These used to be my dad’s,” he explained. “I took the figures I played with the most, and my brother took his. We had to rock-paper-scissors for some of them.” He smiles, remembering the epic battles over Neo Batman and Captain America. “Mom still has his vintage paper comics, and a few of his really old toys, the ones that were my great-great-something-grandmother’s, I think. I’m talking twentieth century - Spider-Man, Wonder Woman. And Thor, she kept Thor. Big, blond, blue eyes,” he adds, in response to Bones’ questioning look. “She says she used to tease Dad for looking like an action figure come to life. It’s how they met.”

“How?”

“He was cosplaying Thor.”

“Cospl- never mind, don’t answer that. I know that one,” Bones says, pointing. Jim rolls his eyes with patient humor.

“Bones, that’s Superman. _Everyone_ knows him.”

“So sue me.” Bones pulls his knees up to his chest and folds his arms on top, resting his chin on them like he’s settling in for a good long listen. “So...your superhero guy wears an old military uniform.”

“He’s a pilot.”

Bones reaches up and touches the edge of Superman’s cape, which is made of real fabric, stiff and faded with age. “Does _he_ have an action figure?”

Jim points to the second one in line, the little blond guy currently wearing dark blue pants, combat boots, and a black shirt, a leather utility belt slung around his waist. “That’s him - he’s in his alternate outfit. I don’t have to make it, that stuff’s easy enough to find.”

“Huh.” Bones picks up the Major Zeph figure and turns it over, examining it from all angles. Jim fidgets. “He does look like you. As much as a tiny piece of plastic can.”

Jim is secretly tickled. “Thanks.”

When Bones puts the figure back in its spot in the line, he is gentle with it. He also pulls its arms up and bends its elbows so it’s in a fighting pose, then turns Superman toward it like they’re battling it out, before going back to his beer. Superman and Major Zeph would never fight. They'd be bros. That's not important, though. What's important is that Jim knows, right then, that this crazy plan of his might just work out.

***

“So, once your costume’s done, then what?” says Bones one Sunday morning, rolling onto his side. For once, they both have the morning free, and Bones for one is taking full advantage of it, lolling in bed with a padd full of recent medical journal articles and without a shirt. Jim doesn’t mind this, to be honest.

“What do you mean?”

“Halloween’s not for another seven months.”

Jim lets out an involuntary “ha” as he flips a sleeve inside out and starts attaching static pins. “Dressing up on Halloween? That’s for amateurs.”

“Then _what?_ ”

“Well...” Jim hunches over his work and doesn’t make eye contact. He doesn’t know why he’s embarrassed talking about this, even with Bones, even after the action figures, but he is. Maybe it’s just that it’s something he’s never really discussed with anyone beforehand. He always goes alone. “There’s this convention that happens every year, for superhero fans, fans of...a bunch of different things. Books, movies...it’s really old. It was founded back in the twentieth century, continued up until the Eugenics Wars, and it ran for a few years between that and World War Three. Then it was re-established a couple decades after first contact, when the entertainment industry and publishing and all that had sort of picked up again.”

“Damn,” says Bones. “Guess you can’t keep a fan down.”

“There’s something to be said for having superheroes as role models,” Jim says with a smile, which really means _thanks for not mocking me._ Bones silently inclines his head, and Jim knows that means _registered, acknowledged._

“So you’re going to this thing.”

“It’s in San Diego. And it falls during class break week -” Jim suspects, actually, that whoever established the Starfleet Academy yearly schedule did so knowing full well when the convention was - “so I’ll probably head down the Saturday before, right after weapons training.”

“And you wear your costume around, and...what?”

Jim shrugs. “Look good. Check out other people’s costumes. Take pictures. Go to panels and question-answer sessions. Look at stuff. Go outside and confuse innocent bystanders. It’s actually a lot of fun, when it’s organized well.”

Bones nods, slowly and clearly not getting where the ‘fun’ part comes in. “Okay.”

“That’s about it.”

“Right.” Bones seems to go back to his reading, and Jim turns back to his sewing machine with an inaudible sigh. He squeezes his eyes shut, draws on every nerve he has, and spins his chair around to face Bones’ desk.

“Bones?”

Bones looks up, very quickly. “Yeah?”

“Would you come with me?”

“I -”

“I know it’s not really your scene, but it might be good. Y’know. To get away. Plus they’ve usually got an open bar at the costume parties, and you haven’t known true hilarity until you’ve seen drunk people in robot costumes with huge glowing plastic swords try to dance together.” He might be babbling. “But you don’t have to come if you don’t want to, I was just -”

“I was going to say, before you interrupted me,” interrupted Bones, raising his voice to be heard over Jim’s stammers, “that I was wondering if you’d actually come out and ask.”

“So you’ll come?”

“I may be able to call in a few favors at Medical.”

Jim grins broadly. “Maybe we could even drive down there instead of taking a shuttle. It’s not far. Like six hours on the superhighway.”

“I think that’s the best idea you’ve ever had.”

“I know, I’m brilliant.”

There is another stretch of silence as Jim sews a few inches more to settle his nerves, still inwardly glowing. Bones yawns widely.

“Of course,” Jim says, as though it’s an afterthought and not something he’s been mentally visualizing for months now, “to get into the costume parties you need a costume.”

***

Leonard has agreed to go, and he isn’t taking it back - Jim seems so hyped about it, it’s the first time he’s ever seen him this honestly enthused without any edge of _fuck you just watch me_ attached to it - but it takes another few days of cajoling before he comes around to the idea of dressing up.

Though he’s loath to admit it, it’s probably the sheer gorgeousness of Jim’s jacket, almost done now except for the pocket flaps and embellishments, that sways him. One night Jim seals the end of a thread off, gets up without a word, and puts it on, holding it shut because although there are buttonholes, there aren’t any buttons yet. Leonard looks up at him, and his glance turns into a long gaze, because Jim looks beyond good in the crisp dark blue, perfectly fitted to his muscular shoulders and lean torso, every seam as straight and neat as if produced by a clothing synthesizer. Leonard would believe he was a twenty-first century military officer. Even the sweatpants he’s wearing on the bottom don’t really take away from the image.

And the fact that he had actually _made_ that thing, much of it painstakingly hand-sewn because Jim Kirk is, shockingly, a goddamn perfectionist, somehow just makes him look even better.

“It isn’t complete without the medals and ribbons,” Jim says, smoothing the front down. “And the pants, obviously. But this is essentially what Major Zeph wears when he’s in human form.”

“Looks good on you,” says Leonard, voice coming out a little more strangled-sounding than he’d intended. He clears his throat. Then he realizes what Jim has just said. “Wait, when he’s in _human form?_ ”

“I can’t dress as Major Zeph when he’s in his actual form because he’s kinda -” Jim waggles his fingers. “Made of wind.”

“Of course he is,” says Leonard, absolutely deadpan.

“He’s a being from the planet Elementia,” says Jim patiently. Leonard presses his lips together, and Jim holds up one finger in warning. “Don’t laugh, it’s supposed to be cheesy. His planet is destroyed, so he comes to Earth, takes on a human form - which happens to look just a little like me - and joins the Earth military as a pilot. But he can still shapeshift if any villains pop up, try to enslave the planet, that kind of thing.”

“I take it you aren’t anticipating an invasion during the convention,” Leonard remarks, mouth twitching. “So who am I?”

Jim looks blankly at him.

“My costume,” prompts Leonard. “Who’m I dressing as?”

***

Once it clicks - that Bones has actually given in - Jim feels himself light up like a Christmas tree. “You’re gonna be the Major’s sidekick, of course,” he says, holding one hand up and squinting one eye closed to cover the left side of Bones’ face in his field of vision. Yes. He’s even got the right hairstyle already, almost. He’s as perfect as Jim always imagined the other half of his dream team would be. “Yeah. I’ll find the props for you, and you’ll need the outfit. I can make that, I’ll just need to take some measurements.”

“Who’s his sidekick?” Bones quips, “the Phantom of the Opera?”

Jim bites his lip as he makes an O with his thumb and finger and holds it over Bones’ eye like a monocle. Except it isn’t a monocle. It’s the protective shield, the oculus, over the super-powered artificial eye he got after he lost his own eye to torture by the fiendish Valafar, duh. “Sharpshooter. That’s his hero name. His real name is Adam.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” says Bones, hazel eye blinking within the circle of Jim’s joined digits.

“He’s a cranky badass with superpowers. You’ll like him. Not quite as cool as the Major, of course, but then few are.”

“Of course,” says Bones dryly.

“What makes them an interesting team,” Jim continues, going and rummaging through his black box and coming back with a measuring tape, which he proceeds to stretch over just about every angle and dimension of Bones’ body, “is that they’re so different, but they have the same goals in mind. One’s an alien but works for the military. One’s a military brat who went his own way and became sort of an outlaw. They should hate each other, but they don’t. Put your arms out, I gotta measure your chest.”

When he comes around to Bones’ front, holding the tape together over his sternum, and notices Bones is smiling, he actually backs up a step. Because he hasn’t let go of the tape yet, though, Bones follows, stumbling a little, almost running into him. “What?”

“It’s cute,” Bones says, then stops, staring at him. They’re so well-matched in height that they’re nearly nose to nose. Though Bones’ broad shoulders slope more than Jim’s, and his torso is longer, which he’ll have to factor into his design. Jim’s knuckles are pressed to his chest, fingers clutching the tape tightly, and he can feel the nubbly, rough texture of body hair under the thin fabric of Bones’ standard-issue tee, and the warmth of Bones himself under that.

“Oh, fuck you,” Jim says, looking away and attempting to not go a shade of red Hellboy would be proud of, but probably failing miserably. His pasty complexion is his constant downfall. He steps back again and readjusts the tape, pulling it snug and flat over Bones’ pectorals. “Take a deep breath.”

“Well, not _cute_ ,” Bones amends, breathing obligingly between words, “but - the way you’re so damn enthusiastic about all this.”

“You would be too if you’d been a hyperactive kid with no other outlets,” Jim mutters, tapping the measurement recorder on the end of the tape and letting the loop slide down to encircle Bones’ waist, pulling it snug. “This was my world. I lived in it. I like visiting when I can.”

Bones sighs. “Jim, I wasn’t mocking you. Just observing.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Jim glances up and nods to let him know it’s okay. “Stop sucking your stomach in, these numbers need to be accurate.”

“I’m not!” Bones protests. But he lets it out anyway.

***

Jim quickly finishes work on his Air Force jacket and, skipping the matching bottoms for now because they’ll be faster to make, decides to start on Bones’ costume. Sharpshooter will be more complicated. Rather than Zeph’s uniform, which is all one fabric, and his relatively simple pants-and-shirt evil-fighting costume - why bother with an elaborate outfit if you’re just going to turn into a hurricane? - Bones’ needs a bunch of different components in fabrics Jim’s never worked with before, not to mention the eyepiece and handpiece and armpiece. He needs makeup, too. And everything is form-fitting. Of course.

Luckily, on a trip into the city to check out a clothing drop-off and exchange that’d come highly recommended on the ‘net, Jim manages to find pants that’ll work. He takes them out of his bag first thing upon arriving back at the dorm and tosses them at Bones, who catches them, unfolds them, and immediately drops them like they’re infected with the Telurian plague. “Nope.”

“But you have to. You already agreed.”

“ _No leather pants,_ Jim.”

“They aren’t leather. They’re a flexible synthetic fiber blend with water-resistant coating. Perfect for when you’re fighting with your partner - your buddy, I mean - and he turns into a rainstorm.”

“Well, I am not a flexible-synthetic-fiber-blend-with-water-resistant-coating kind of guy. Is there a superhero who wears khakis and a button-down? Can I be him instead?”

“No. You’re Sharpshooter. And what the fuck else are you supposed to wear when you’re hurtling across the rooftops of a floating city, blowing shit up?” Jim says, exasperated. He picks up the pants and shoves them back into Bones’ arms. “Just try them. Please.”

“They look tight,” says Bones in a dour voice.

“That’s how superheroes dress. You can’t snag your clothes on everything you pass. You’ll _die._ ” He turns Bones around and pushes him toward the bathroom. Bones casts him a deeply outraged look. “My alternate outfit is almost the same. We’ll match. Put the pants on.”

Bones goes into the bathroom and closes the door.

“Well?” Jim calls after about forty-five seconds have elapsed.

“I thought Sharpshooter was a practical guy!” Bones yells back, slightly muffled. “I don’t think he’d wear shiny pants, and I bet he’d agree with me!”

“They’re not shiny! And tell that to his artists!”

“Jesus,” he hears Bones mutter, along with something that sounds distinctly like hopping on one foot.

When he comes back out a few minutes later, the pants are neatly folded over his arm, and he looks resolute, if a little sweaty. “I’ll wear them,” is all he says, but he won’t change back into them and let Jim see, no matter how much Jim wheedles.

***

As con week approaches, Jim downloads the first ten issues of _Major Zeph_ , the original retro revival run from the early twenty-first century, to Bones’ padd. He’s happy to see that instead of scoffing, Bones sets about reading them as soon as he has the opportunity, though occasionally with a furrowed brow or deeply skeptical eyebrow raise.

_The Galactic Adventures of **Major Zeph** , the Hurricane Man_

_featuring_

_His Devoted Sidekick, Adam ‘ **Sharpshooter** ’ Adamovsky_

_A cataclysm claimed his home and his people...he’s made it his mission to ensure that Earth does not suffer the same fate!_

_In this issue: Enraged by the brazen kidnapping of his friend The Sharpshooter, Major Zeph has tracked the notorious intergalactic fugitive Lord Valafar to a secret spacebound lair of horrors..._

“So, what’s happening here is this Valafar guy is torturing Adamovsky with a giant laser beam.” Bones holds up the padd to illustrate his point with the appropriate panel, which Jim knows well - poor Sharpshooter, trapped writhing inside a torture tube while a massive laser beam (solar-powered, naturally) about as wide as his entire body shoots through the tube lengthwise. Ouch. “Putting aside the fact that he should’ve been vaporized -”

“People didn’t really care about science in these old comics, Bones. I mean, Pablo Perez got bitten by a radioactive spider, and what do you think happened to him?”

“He didn’t take an antibiotic, the wound got infected and filled with pus and caused a massive case of sepsis, and his last words before he died were ‘why didn’t I go to emerg at some point within the last forty-eight hours.’”

Jim goes to facepalm but smacks himself by mistake in the forehead with his own padd, which he’d forgotten he’d been holding. “Ow. Oh my God, Bones. He became _Spider-Man._ He got spider powers. Did you not have a childhood?”

“Yes. I spent it playing outside. In nature.”

“What was your point again?”

“My point was, it seems far-fetched to think that full immersion torture with electromagnetic radiation would result not only in nerve damage to only _one_ side of his body, but also to the loss of only one eye _and_ the acquisition of laser mind-control powers.”

“He doesn’t get the lasers until later, Bones, those are implants. He only gets the ability to _control_ laser powers, which he doesn’t know about until he gets them. When Zeph takes him to see the scientist Dr. Starrlet in her secret asteroid lab so she can heal him -”

“And then,” Bones says loudly, continuing to talk over Jim’s well-meant explanation, “the ability to shoot a high-powered energy weapon through mind control out of an implanted device in the palm of his hand doesn’t appear to affect the rest of his body. Does he at any point suffer third-degree burns to his fingers from the proximity of laser beams? Damage to his biological eye from constant exposure to extremely strong light? Skin cancer? A nice tan?”

He’s having too much fun with this, and Jim kind of loves it. “Booooones.”

“What I do find interesting, though, is that comic book authors in the early twenty-first century anticipated the widespread use of mentally-integrated cybernetic implants and artificial limbs decades before they became a reality. I mean, that’s something we’re still exploring and trying to perfect three centuries later. Their foresight is actually pretty remarkable. Even if we’re using the concept to treat paralysis and limb loss, and they used it have their superhero more accurately shoot people with laser beams.”

Jim waits. Bones looks at him. No smart-alecky or sarcastic remark is forthcoming, and Jim realizes he’s serious. “Really?”

“Really.” Bones settles back down to his reading, flicking the screen to turn the page, and Jim shakes his head and goes back to his warp core schematic, grinning to himself.

***

One day, Leonard comes in from his clinic hours to find the dreaded shiny black pants lying over the foot of his bed. He picks them up in distaste, and finds underneath the piece Jim had been working on, now apparently complete: a sleeveless, high-collared shirt, comprised of a dozen different textures and weights of dark green and black textile and leather, put together to make something that looks sleek and high-tech even to Leonard’s unfashionable eye. There’s a piece like a harness that goes over it, another kind of like a complicated black wrist brace, and even a fingerless glove, in a weightless, almost invisible fabric with the silver laser device fixed into the palm. He’s amazed, and touched, that Jim would put this much work into a costume he’ll only be wearing for a couple of days. But then, Jim tends to do that - refuses to give anything less than his best.

Jim himself doesn’t seem to be around, but Leonard goes ahead and puts the costume on anyway, then goes to the bathroom - step hitching on the way as he tugs the damned pants out of his ass, grimacing as they promptly ride up again two seconds later - to have a look in the mirror. He has to admit he doesn’t look bad. Even the pants, shiny as they are. It all goes together, and the lines of the shirt are very flattering in just the right spots, giving him heroic definition he doesn't necessarily have. He’s just twisting around to make sure his ass will be acceptable in a public forum when he hears the room door open.

“In here,” Leonard calls. “Unless it’s Mitchell, in which case fuck off.”

“Hell no,” says Jim’s voice, followed by the thudding sound of a heavy bag dropping to the floor. “You found it?”

“Yeah. Looks good.”

Jim comes into the bathroom and stops short. He takes a long minute to stare at Leonard, visibly chewing the inside of his cheek. Leonard stands uncomfortably and self-consciously straight as that unnerving blue gaze travels up and down his body, and awaits Jim’s word of approval. Which, surprisingly, doesn’t actually come in so many words.

“You need to practice the pose,” Jim says instead. "Right now."

“Huh?”

“Look. Look at this.” Jim scrambles for his padd, taps it frantically, and shoves it into Leonard’s face, and Leonard bats it away in annoyance. He holds it at a more readable angle so Leonard can see what he’s referring to: the cover of the first issue, with Zeph and Sharpshooter in a defensive side-by-side pose. The latter is holding his laser hand up, arm straight and ready to fire, an expression on his face that says _let’s get down to business._ Leonard does like that. The former is guarding the latter’s un-lasered side, which seems practical, and has his arm heroically up across his chest like he’s preparing to tear his shirt off, which he has done prior to a few battles in the issues Jim gave him. It’s so he can find his shirt again later, after he’s turned from a force of nature back into a guy. The disappearance and reappearance of his pants and footwear, on the other hand, tends to go unexplained.

As poses go, they’re unremarkable, not flashy, but Leonard still feels a sense of preemptive embarrassment at the idea of actually doing it in front of people. “Do we have to?"

“We’re doing it.”

“I’m dressed up, isn’t that enough? C’mon, Jim,” sighs Leonard as Jim yanks him out of the bathroom and manhandles him into position, pulling his arm up and even uncurling his fingers for him, rotating his torso to exactly the right heroic angle. “I feel asinine standing like this.”

Jim pauses, mouth fallen the slightest bit open. His hands are warm on either side of Leonard’s waist, like they’ve frozen mid-dance, only Leonard’s never danced with anybody in quite this configuration before, and never with anyone who looked quite like Jim. Boys like him had been in mighty short supply at Marietta High back in the day, and even if there had been, they probably wouldn’t have bothered -

Whatever. This isn’t a dance, and he isn’t a moony high-schooler. He doesn’t even know why his brain brought it up.

“You don’t _have_ to,” Jim says carefully, in a tone so precisely modulated to say _casual nonchalance_ that Bones knows Jim is disappointed. Which makes him feel like a piece of shit. “I just thought, since people’ll probably ask for it...”

“Show me the picture again,” says Leonard in resignation, and Jim’s bright eyes go even brighter as he grabs the padd. Leonard bites his lip and studies it, and adjusts his stance a touch. “I’m always on this side?”

“So I can guard your undefended side,” says Jim, confirming Leonard’s theory. “Stay still.” Jim darts over to his desk, props up the padd, and sets the camera timer. “Five, four, three, two, one -”

The godawful angle of the resulting holo gives Leonard about three chins and makes Jim’s cranium look even more enormous than usual, but when Jim announces that he’s sending a copy to his mother, who loves the comic, Leonard can’t even find it in his heart to complain.

***

_Hey, Mom. Here’s the Sharpshooter costume progress -- the seaming on the green shirt was tricky, but I got it figured out eventually. You were asking about Bones. Well, this is Bones. I know. Just imagine him complaining incessantly in a southeastern accent; he’s incomplete without the audio. Trust me. Jim._

***

It’s two days before the official beginning of break week and Jim’s just about got their plans sorted out. He outlines them to Bones once more in the mess hall lunch line, during the scant half-hour they get to see each other during the day on Fridays.

“I’ve got the rental booked, and you’re done at the lab around fourteen hundred, right? I’ll be finished an hour before, so I’ll pick up the car and we’ll meet back at the dorm.”

“Obviously, considering that’s where our bags will be,” says Bones from in front of him, as he orders up a cup of coffee from the synthesizer and wrinkles his nose as he places it on the tray. Unlike Jim, who honestly can't tell the difference, Bones hates synthesized coffee with a passion. It's caffeinated, though. “Can I thank you again for not making me get on a shuttle?”

"You know I love you."

In front of Bones, a head of riotous red curls turns around, and Cadet Gaila’s cheery green face looks back at them over her shoulder. Gaila’s always an experience for the eyeballs, every time Jim sees her. “Where are you going for break, gorgeous?”

Seeing as Bones probably won’t respond to that moniker, Jim answers for both of them. “Down south to San Diego, beautiful,” he says, flashing Gaila his most charming grin in return. Her eyes light up.

“Ny- Uhura!” Cadet Uhura turns around with a long swish of her braided ponytail, packaged salad in hand. She nods and smiles pleasantly at Bones, who she actually likes. But when she sees Jim behind him, waving at her in his most facetious manner, her expression closes off, winged black eyeliner sharp like poison darts. “Kirk and McCoy are going to San Diego!”

“Your name starts with Ny? Her name starts with Ny,” Jim informs Bones, as Uhura sniffs disdainfully and and turns back around to order up a tea.

“I know what her name is. Everybody knows what her name is. Gaila actually _told_ you what her name was. You’re the only damn person keeping up this charade.”

“Guess where we’re going,” says Gaila to Bones, ignoring his remarks and snagging a bowl of fruit.

Bones, bless him, pretends to think about it. Gaila’s still working on picking up the finer points of English conversational cues. “Are you perhaps going to San Diego, too?”

“We are! To the convention.”

Jim grabs a roll of flatware and a biodegradable pod of butter for his tray. “Hey, I didn’t know you were a nerd, Uhura.”

“Uhura’s a nerd?” says Gary Mitchell’s voice from somewhere further up the line.

“Oh my God, I should have gone to the library,” says Uhura, hunching her shoulders a little bit.

“What’s a nerd, please?” Gaila asks Bones.

“A nerd,” says Bones patiently, collecting his own flatware, “is, I believe, a person who likes dressing up in costumes and going to conventions. Jim, for example, is a nerd.”

“Oh, yes, then,” Gaila says, “we’re also very large nerds.”

“Nice,” remarks Gary’s voice.

“We’ll have to meet up when we’re there, guys.”

“Um, pardon me,” says a high-pitched voice in a strong Slavic accent from somewhere behind Jim, “this is wery interesting, and I am also a nerd, but you are all holding up the lunch line.”

***

The weather’s nice on Saturday and the voyage from San Francisco to San Diego proves uneventful. Bones puts a ratty Atlanta Braves baseball cap on (which Jim roundly mocks him for, as he's never shown the least inclination for or interest in sports whatsoever), pulls it down low over his eyes and promptly drifts off in the passenger seat. By the time he wakes up, claiming Jim’s humming along to the classical channel has done it, they’re already well past Monterey. Jim drives with the car on manual rather than autopilot - he misses the feel of a high-speed ground vehicle’s controls under his hands - and they make good time on the Pacific Superhighway, the most beautiful trip by land Jim thinks he’s ever done. They agree to spend a little more time dawdling on the return trip, but for now, they want to get south fast. Nerdery is waiting.

They pass a ‘Welcome to San Diego!’ sign around eight in the evening, and head straight for the nearest hotel indicated by the dashboard computer. Jim keeps his eyes peeled for the out-of-town pedestrians who are wandering around everywhere like sheep, looking at their city guides instead of the road, and Bones looks curiously out the window, his hat now nowhere to be found. San Diego is not too unlike San Francisco, hilly and becoming blanketed with the customary spring fog the closer they get to the waterfront. There’s a smaller downtown Starfleet training base here, mostly enlisted personnel, but nothing like the size of the Academy. The skyscrapers don’t reach quite as high as San Fran, and there’s overall less air traffic, more vegetation, and more people in shorts and sunglasses. It all has the air of a vacation paradise, the perfect place for a convention.

“Nice-looking city,” Bones observes. “I’ve never been here before.”

“Check the computer for a sec,” Jim requests, peering up at the glowing street signs. Daylight is just about gone. “What do the bookings look like?”

“They’re - oh, last three vacancies just filled up at the Marina Prime, Jim.” Bones flicks his fingers over the screen. “We gotta go somewhere else. It’s recommending the Balboa, next right.”

Accordingly, Jim turns right, then left two intersections later at the computer’s direction, but before they get there, the Balboa too fills up.

“We should’ve cosplayed Mary and Joseph instead of Adam and Zeph,” Jim says as he rounds another corner onto a street lined with palm trees, and Bones shoots him a look of eyebrow-raised horror, which is exactly the reaction Jim had been hoping for. He makes his own fun.

“Never say that again.”

“Okay, but if we don’t find a hotel room we’re gonna be staying in a barn, just letting you know.”

“Why the hell didn’t you _book_ one? During a massive event attended by thousands of people?”

Jim’s kind of wondering that himself at the moment, but he won’t admit it to Bones. “I never needed to before. It’s busy, but San Diego has like the highest concentration of hotels on the West Coast for exactly this reason. We’ll find something, we’ve only checked two places. C’mon.”

Two more nearby hotels are no-goes, and Jim's stomach is growling. So they go through a random retro-themed drive-through for classic Mexican instead and eat in the parking lot, dripping salsa and refried beans onto their laps and scrolling through the computer system for listings. It doesn’t matter too much where they stay in the city, because the convention venues are dotted throughout and they can always beam from place to place whenever they need to, unenthused as Bones is by the idea. Jim shudders to think what the old pre-transporter, pre-maglev days might have been like, with thousands of people clogging the streets with vehicles.

“If you look at pictures it used to be ridiculous. They’ve streamlined it a lot in the last century.”

“You have hot sauce on your chin,” Bones points out irrelevantly, face amused in the glow of the restaurant’s neon sign.

Jim calls up a likely-looking place and manages to get the last - the _very last_ \- room by swearing to them that they’re a ten-minute drive away. Which they are. They actually pull up to the Paradisio San Diego nine minutes and eighteen seconds later.

“Kirk, party of two, I presume?” the concierge says cheerfully when they schlep up to the desk with their bags, and Jim nods in gratitude, Bones bumping into his shoulder accidentally as he sways on the spot. It’s relatively early still, but they were up early for duties back on campus too, and they’re both tired, even Bones after his old man car nap. They enter their fingerprints in the database to get keyed to their room, and head up on the turbolift, which like the front lobby is decorated in tacky fake wood and gold and looks like it came straight out of the 2180s.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Jim remarks, slapping his hand against their room access panel.

“Might’ve been easier with a booking to begin with,” says Bones pointedly as he steps inside.

Of course, that’s when they find out there’s only one bed.

“Dibs,” says Bones loudly and immediately, dropping his suitcase and diving face-first onto the tropical-flowered, inexplicably toucan-patterned bedspread with a childishness Jim wouldn’t have believed was possible from him. Jim yells in protest, his always quick-firing brain coming up with an instantaneous solution to this outrage.

“Do you know how many people’s dried-up DNA is probably on that blanket, Dr. McCoy?” he hollers, and Bones yelps and rolls off the other side of the bed, leaping to his feet and looking down at himself like he’s expecting to see visible cartoon sperm cells wriggling all over him. “Ha!” Jim cries, spread-eagling over the mattress. “The hotel industry uses standardized deep-decontamination protocols, sucker!”

“Oh, fuck you.” Bones stomps across the beige carpeting toward the door. “I’m gonna go back down and ask if someone wants to swap for a double room. I dunno why they’d assume we wanted a single bed.”

“Our obvious sexual tension?”

“Over the _phone?_ ”

Funny how he doesn't deny it. “They’re full, Bones.” Jim rolls onto his back and spreads his arms, gesturing to the Amazon-like expanse he is lying on. “We could go somewhere else if it’s that much of an issue, but it’s a huge bed and we’re both adults here and, I mean - we live in the same room anyway, our beds are five feet apart.”

Bones sighs. “Fine. I don’t care if you don’t. Just stay on your side and don’t kick me in your sleep.”

***

Jim wakes suddenly at 0200 hours, sensing something unusual. Outside the balcony doors, which he is facing towards, the lights of the city are glowing in the darkness. He is still obediently on his side of the bed, but Bones is wrapped around his body like an octopus, snuffling softly and damply into the back of Jim’s neck in his sleep, one leg thrown heavily up over Jim’s thigh and his right hand gripping the front of Jim’s Academy t-shirt.

It’s...moderately uncomfortable. Mentally speaking. Parts of Bones and parts of Jim that had no prior physical acquaintance (though, okay, maybe some visual acquaintance; Jim isn’t gonna lie to himself about the occasional surreptitious junk inspections when Bones is walking around in his shorts) are suddenly getting pretty intimate with each other. Jim doesn’t want to wake Bones up and shame him, though. He’d be horrified at his unintentional invasion of Jim’s privacy and person, and it would cast a pall of embarrassment over their trip, which has barely even started.

He lies there for a moment, still as a statue and careful to regulate his breathing, considering his options. There’s really only one thing he can do, and fortunately he’s talented at it. He closes his eyes, and nestles back into Bones’ embrace, and goes back to sleep.

It _is_ kind of nice. No one would ever have taken Bones for a spooner.

***

Leonard awakens with a mouthful of fuzz and a crushing pressure on his chest.

He gasps for air, thinking he’s having a heart attack. To die under a bedspread covered in toucans in a hotel room in San Diego in the middle of a comic convention; of all the horrible deaths he’s envisioned for himself over the years, he couldn’t have seen that one coming. But a panicked moment or two later, he realizes the fuzz is just Jim’s hair, and the pressure is Jim’s head, cradled peacefully on his chest, extra-large and therefore extra-heavy. Jim, with that ego of his, would probably say it was from all the brains inside.

Pulse still pounding in his ears but satisfied for the moment that he isn’t dying, Leonard catalogs the rest of his current circumstances, noting with growing nervousness that not only is Jim’s whole body tucked cozily up against his, his hand flat on Leonard’s ribs under his shirt, but Leonard has his arm around him, like he used to like to do with his ex back when they were still fucking and before they became allergic to each other. He doesn’t know how this managed to happen without him waking up and noticing it.

The pressure eases a little as Jim sniffs and shifts and then looks up at him, just a glimpse of blue irises from under half-closed lids. His chin digs sharply into Leonard's sternum. “Bones?” he says in husky tones, and Leonard gulps.

“We didn’t accidentally have sex, did we?” he ventures, because there’s just no beating around the bush. That’s one thing he learned from a craptastic marriage, and it’s tended to serve him well in most circumstances. Just get it out there.

Jim’s eyes pop all the way open at that, and he quickly disentangles himself and sits up, hair smashed flat on one side and damp with Leonard’s drool on the top. He looks fairly adorable, in Leonard’s opinion, but definitely not sexy or like a person Leonard would have fucked in high school, at all. “What the hell? No. We didn’t drink anything, I don’t think? We had Mexican food and checked in and took showers and turned in early. That’s what I remember.”

“Why’re you asking about drinking?”

“I don’t know. I just assumed you’d have to be drunk in order to fuck me, since it wouldn’t be...characteristic.” Jim’s face is red. “Listen, I’m sorry for sleeping on you, but in my defense, you started it.”

“Ugh. Forget it.” Leonard scrubs a hand over his crusty face. This is not a conversation to be having five seconds after waking up, or ever with Jim Kirk. “What time is it?”

Jim checks the clock built into the bedside stand. “Time to get moving, there’s a panel at eleven and I want a good seat. They’re re-rebooting Star Wars next year.”

Good. A conversational shift. Thanks, Jim. “Already? Christ. Order us some food, I’m gonna hit the shower.”

***

An hour later, they regard their fully-costumed reflections in the bathroom mirror.

"We look hot," says Jim.

"Not bad at all," says Bones, in tones of surprise.

Jim slings an arm around Bones' shoulders, and watches Zeph do the same to Adam, mirrored. Perfect. "Bones...thanks."

He can tell Bones is pleased, but in his customary grumpy way, not wanting to admit it. His dimples are fighting to break through. "You're gonna smudge my scars. C'mon, let's go, or you'll miss Star Wars."

Well, Jim wouldn't want that to happen. They grab their comms and run.

***

The sun is shining, and the entire downtown of the city seems to have been taken over by Comic-Con. The crowds are unfathomably massive, the din of voices near-deafening, and even with the dozens of automated sign-in and ticketing kiosks lining the streets, it still takes forty-five minutes to get into the venue they want, the massive glass-fronted San Diego Convention Center.

“Thirty-first floor, Ry-Hun Yong Auditorium. ‘Star Wars 2257: A New New New Hope,’” Leonard reads off the itinerary, one eye scrunched shut. “I hope the movie isn’t called that.” He’s trying to get used to the eye shield that’s part of his costume, wrapped around one side of his head in sort of a pilot’s earpiece and then pasted over one of his eye sockets with cosmetic glue, but it feels strange, like it could pop off at any second. He’s also afraid to touch that side of his face, because despite Jim’s assurances that the fake scars and veins he’d applied - all the way from Leonard’s temple down into his collar, and down his laser arm as well - won’t come off without solvent, Leonard isn’t used to it. Even his hair feels wrong, darkened to Adamovsky accuracy with tinted gel.

Jim, unfairly handsome and professional in his Air Force suit with his hair swept back and gleaming, is looking excitedly around the cavernous entry hall. It’s a kind of holding and mingling area, filled with information stands, transporter booths, water and snack dispensers, and holographic projections and banners of the various highlights and activities on offer. Members of every Federation species are wandering around, about half of them dressed up as characters Leonard couldn’t even begin to identify. He can’t figure out if some people are really aliens he's never seen before, or humans dressed as fictional aliens, or real aliens dressed as fictional humans. Surely that Vulcan in Jedi robes couldn't be an actual Vulcan. “Fun fact for you - in the early days, people used to wait hours to get in. Like, five, six, seven hours.”

“I wouldn’t wait in a line for seven hours if Harrison Ford himself rose from the grave to do a Q&A.” This so Jim would know he was serious, because he’d shown Leonard the Star Wars movies - not the re-reboot or the reboot, but the ancient originals - and he knows very well Leonard is now furiously in hero-love.

“Really? The chance to get into the same room as Harrison Ford? I would. I’d fuck Harrison Ford, wouldn’t you?”

Leonard has just opened his mouth to protest too much when someone approaches them, dressed as some kind of yellow creature with a tail, the whites of her eyes totally blacked out somehow, unless it's natural. “Oh gosh -" (nope, human female, Leonard decides) - "I’m sorry, but I love Major Zeph. Your costumes are fantastic. Could I take a picture with you?” she asks excitedly, motioning with her camera.

“Of course,” says Jim warmly. “Do the pose,” he adds out of the side of his mouth to Leonard. Leonard moves over, bemused, so she can pose between them, and obediently turns his eyepiece and handpiece on and does his laser-out stance. She gives her comm to her friend (dressed correspondingly as a blue creature with a tail) and Leonard can’t help but notice that a few others milling around pause and take a holo of them, too, without asking. Leonard’s mildly annoyed, but he figures he’s let himself in for it.

“How did you get the eye effect? Is it a film?” the blue creature wants to know, motioning to Leonard’s covered eye. He can’t feel it, but he knows the drop Jim had administered gives it a bright, iridescent glow.

“He knows better than I do,” replies Leonard, gesturing to Jim, who launches into an explanation which turns into a discussion of costuming techniques Leonard doesn’t even bother trying to follow.

“What about yours?” the yellow one innocently asks Jim, who laughs self-consciously.

“His are real,” Leonard interjects, with some pride, and the two regard Jim with awe. Jim glances over at Leonard and bites back a smile.

“You guys are adorable, have fun,” Yellow says fervently when she leaves.

“Are we?” Leonard says, fairly mortified, and Jim shrugs.

“We’re accurate. The rest kinda depends on your point of view.”

A few more people snap holos of them as they wander the convention ground floor, looking for a way upstairs. Sometimes Jim has them do the pose again, just for no reason, which Leonard feels ridiculous doing but which people around them seem to love. He tells himself to get over it. Everyone else in costume is posing, too, or pretending to fight with their fake weapons. Compared to, say, the giant caterpillar guy levitating on a cloud across the way, or the girl with wings and blue hair down to the floor, Jim looks extremely normal, and he looks...mostly normal, at least from one side.

“How’s your eyepiece?”

Leonard touches the bit hooked over his ear. It doesn’t seem to be coming off, at least, and it isn’t impeding his vision as much as he’d feared. “Feels weird every time I move my eyebrows.”

“Don’t, then. Wait, what am I saying. Tell a bird not to tweet, a dog not to bark -”

“Ha, ha.”

“The ocean tides not to respond to the caress of the Moon -”

“I will laser you into oblivion if you keep it up, canon or no canon.”

***

The Star Wars panel sure is something, though Leonard regrets having left his medical kit back at the hotel when it’s over, because he’s fairly sure he’s ruptured an eardrum from all the screaming. He and Jim get electronic vouchers to exchange downstairs for toy lightsabers later on. They go to a panel Leonard had been interested in next, a history of medicine in sci-fi and fantasy - truly, this convention does cater to every taste - and Jim even has to admit he enjoys it. It didn't even have a lineup, which was about seventy-five percent of the reason he'd chosen it to begin with. Leonard hates lines.

"More than you hate transporters?" Jim wonders.

Leonard considers this. "It's a toss-up, to be honest."

At lunch, at a ramen place a few blocks down from the convention center, they run into Gaila and Uhura coming out just as they’re going in. They’re dressed up: Gaila in a silky green leaf-textured dress a shade or two darker than her skin, leafy vines twining over her bare shoulders and through her bright orange curls, and Uhura in clingy black and red motley with her hair in two long tails, one her normal dark brown, one colored the same stoplight red as her lips and nails, both with distracting little bells fixed to the end. He doesn’t know who they’re supposed to be, but they look great. He isn't used to seeing them out of uniform.

“Wow,” says Jim fervently, saluting. “Ladies.”

“Sir,” Gaila says cheekily as they walk by, and Uhura even throws a wink Leonard’s way. They run off down the sidewalk, giggling like the college-age girls they are instead of the serious cadets they have to pretend to be most of the time, and Leonard shakes his head and has to laugh himself. He can see why there are so many adults around today, some as old as his grandparents would be and still dressed up, even Vulcans. As Jim says, sometimes it’s nice to escape for a little while.

***

“We are not entering the costume contest.”

“C’mon, Bones! We might be the one of the only Zeph and Adam pairs here, they’re a niche comic!”

“ _No._ ”

Jim enters their picture in the costume contest anyway, and they later as they’re heading back to the hotel, he gets a message that they’ve made it through to the Terran graphic novel final the next day.

“I’m never going to forgive you,” Bones says sulkily for the fourth time, sitting on the end of the bed in his costume minus the eyepiece, as Jim comes out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and another wrapped around his head. No sonics here, but no character-building water rationing either. One thing Jim misses about civilian life is unlimited hot water. “I can’t believe you did that.”

“I can’t believe we got into the _final_ ,” Jim retorts, energetically fluffing his hair dry. “Even if it’s just because there weren’t any more Zephs entered. You can put this on your resume, Bones.”

Bones rubs his fading eye. “Costume contest finalist, Comic-Con 2256. Yeah, I’ll put it right between the new brain surgery procedure I invented and the record-breaking amount of alcohol I plan on drinking tomorrow night to erase this from my memory.”

Jim knows he’s just grousing for the sake of grousing. So he plants his hands on the bed on either side of Bones’ knees and leans over, so that their noses are almost touching and Jim’s dripping water on him. The mattress creaks under them. Bones goes sweetly cross-eyed. “I’m glad I’m a costume contest finalist with my best friend,” Jim says, and then he stands up and walks away. He’s never called Bones his best friend before.

He doesn’t hear anything more about it for the rest of the evening.

That night, in his sleep, Bones holds on to him even more tightly than he did the night before. Jim carefully rolls over within the cage of his arms, presses his cheek to Bones' shoulder, and smiles as he drifts off.

***

As harrowing experiences go, getting up on stage in leather pants (he doesn’t care what kind of textile Jim says they are, they’re _leather pants_ ) under bright lights and in front of several thousand people with cameras and doing a stupid pose so said people can cheer for him ranks a little above his Ph.D. thesis defense, but a little below divorce court. Leonard deals with it, though, for Jim’s sake, because it makes Jim happy. Jim even kisses him on the cheek when their presentation is done, he’s so wound up from the attention; this just makes the screams go up a notch in both pitch and intensity.

“You did good, Bones,” Jim yells as they leave the stage to wait in the holding area, arm around Leonard’s waist. He doesn’t usually do that, either, but Leonard isn’t going to comment on it. After waking up that morning wound around each other in the toucan bed again, he’s starting to get used to the feeling of Jim’s arms and other body parts on and around him. It’s been awhile since anybody held him or draped themselves over him with such casual affection; he might even admit it’s kind of nice, even if it’s just for this week.

“Yeah, I better have done good, since these pictures are probably gonna haunt me for the rest of my career,” Leonard hollers back, pushing down a strange feeling of wistfulness at this sight of Jim’s flushed cheeks and covering it up with a nice thick layer of bluster.

They were the last of the duos. A lone guy goes up onstage next, slim, medium height. His eyes are covered by dark, streamlined goggles, and above them his black hair sticks up in tufts. His costume is impressive and professional-looking, black with intricate purple detailing that must have taken forever to do if he’d done it by hand.

“He’s dressed as Obsidian Blade, big in the inter-war era,” Jim says close to Leonard’s ear, as the guy whips out what looks like the handle of a sword, which had been concealed at his waist. He holds it in front of him, two-handed, and then - the crowd lets out a collective gasp, mixed with murmurs of appreciation, as Obsidian Blade presses a button and an actual blade comes whipping out of the handle somehow, the retractable silver sections unfolding and connecting themselves together until, in a bare couple of seconds, he’s got a full, smooth silver sword gleaming under the stage lights.

“Wow,” Leonard says, impressed by the technological sleight-of-hand.

“No fucking _way,_ ” Jim exclaims. “I’ve met costumers who’ve been trying to figure out how to perfect that for _years._ ”

When Obsidian Blade starts doing tricks, sword flashing in figure-eights as he pulls off backflips and complicated-looking rolls and kicks like he’s fighting an invisible foe, everyone else in his category knows they’re fucked. He eventually takes first place, high-fiving his fellow competitors on his way up to the stage again to take his bows, a shy grin on his face under the big goggles.

Jim and Leonard end up taking eighth place in the pairs category, which is not bad at all, in Leonard’s opinion, considering how many people had taken part. They don’t have to go up again - only the top three get called, the rest of the results just flash across the screens - but Jim grabs him in a tight hug anyway, ruffling the perfect Sharpshooter hairdo he’d spent ten minutes getting just right earlier. “Yes,” he crows in Leonard’s ear. “I knew we weren’t flashy enough to win, but we’re awesome. We’re the greatest.”

“We sure are,” says Leonard, holding on tight and pressing his cheek to Jim’s hair.

***

On the third morning, Jim and Bones wake up almost simultaneously, face to face on the same pillow. Bones’ irises are both a translucent green in the morning light that stripes the bed. Jim reaches up and pushes back a lock of his hair, still a bit stiff from coloring, that has fallen across his sleep-smoothed forehead.

“We have gotta stop meeting like this,” he murmurs, and Bones gets a look on his face Jim can’t quite read, and rolls over and out of bed, heading for the bathroom. Jim flops onto his back, then reaches for his comm.

***

~~_Hi Mom. Weird question: when you met Dad, how did you know you w_~~

_Hi, Mom -- quick note. Having a great time. Wish you were here. Bet you do, too. Jim._

***

Breakfast after that is charged, the air between them full of a thick, not-quite-comfortable silence they’ve never experienced in their relationship before. They eat quickly, keeping their mouths full. Usually Bones talks and Jim listens, or Jim talks and Bones interjects amusingly, or they’re both companionably quiet, but never have they been unsure of what to say to each other, and Jim doesn’t like it.

When they’re finished, Jim slips into his Air Force blues, and he helps Bones with his makeup as usual, and they head off to the marketplace to get their lightsabers and see what’s on offer. It feels easier to Jim when they’re out of the room and part of the crowd; it gives them things to safely converse about, of which there are many. After thirty seconds Jim can tell Bones is a little overwhelmed by the selection of merchandise. Artwork, toys, games, books upon books for download and even some real bound ones, holoposters and maps, props, clothes and shoes and costumes and gadgets. It ranges from the simple to the high-tech, tiny to huge, child-friendly to decidedly adult, tailored to different species. Some of it is on display, but most of it is in the computer database, to be selected and delivered or synthesized on the spot with exclusive coding only the suppliers know.

Bones chooses a green lightsaber à la Princess Ledala from the re-reboot, a stylus with a little starship on the end of it - surprisingly - and a t-shirt. Jim goes with classic Skywalker blue, a few exclusive comic downloads and a plastimer figure for his collection: an Adamovsky, laser glowing in the middle of his tiny palm. Bones smiles a little wearily when he sees it.

“Really doesn’t look like me.”

“The eyebrows aren’t right,” Jim agrees, carefully wrapping it and putting it into his bag. He glances up at Bones again, hopefully, but Bones is looking away, his eyes fixed on a display of rainbow-hued glassware. Jim sighs silently.

***

They decide to go to one of the costume galas that evening, since it’ll be their final full day in the city. The gala venue is decorated like a planetarium, the rounded glass ceiling sparkling with holographic star projections and nebulae. Beyond it, the actual sky of San Diego is darkening, sunset orange and purple blending into the perpetual haze of yellowish light pollution and buzzing skycraft, artifice and nature creating a layered effect that makes Jim a little bit dizzy when he looks at it.

He looks at Bones instead, and the dark smudges of his eyes and mouth in the low light. Both his iris and the little indicator on his eyepiece are glowing, just like they do in the comic, so Jim can always tell where Bones is. So Zeph can always tell where Adam is, rather.

It's so busy they can't help but strike up conversations with a few people on their way over to the bar. An older lady and her daughter, both dressed as silvery-skinned androids. A squad of Andorians cosplaying as anime superheroines. A Captain America and Thor, very handsy with each other and clearly well on their way to happily smashed, who insist that Sharpshooter and Zeph are inspirations to them and tell Jim and Bones how completely adorable they are for dressing as them.

“People keep saying that, _adorable_ ,” Bones complains once the muscular duo have gone on their way. “I didn’t think we were supposed to be adorable.”

“Let’s just get a drink,” Jim says shortly.

They try out one of the official convention cocktails - something involving Risan sparkling wine and lime juice, not half bad and deceptively strong - and manage to find a spot at the end of the long bar, under a fiber-optic tree.

“So?” asks Jim when their drinks are mostly gone and he, for one, is starting to feel a nice buzz. Buzz is good. Buzz distracts him from how off things have felt, ever since that quiet moment early in the morning.

“So?” echoes Bones, absently rubbing the skin around his eye shield.

“Are you having a good time? Not too nerdy for you?”

“No. Surprisingly. Thank you, Jim.” Bones raises his glass to him, and Jim raises his own and clinks. In that moment they’re on the same wavelength again, though it’s tentative. “For the costume, for bringing me - it’s definitely been an experience.”

Jim wonders if Bones is thinking the same thing he is. How the experience, the escape, is going to end soon, and they’ll be going back to San Francisco and the Academy and their little single beds in their little dorm room, and he guesses they’ll just have to choose to forget what’s been going on. Though he isn't sure how that'll work. They could blame it all they wanted on the forced sleeping circumstances, on their bodies’ automatic cuddle reflexes, on their parents showing them either not enough or too much affection as children, whatever the hell they might choose to. But the fact remains that over the last few days, the two of them have discovered that they have a physical attraction between them as strong and as natural as the Earth and the Moon. If the Earth and the Moon liked to spoon and drool on each other and then not know how to address it afterwards.

And now, it’s uncomfortable, and Jim doesn’t know what to do, and he’s afraid to bring it up. He doesn’t want this to ruin what they have. They still have to room together, and Jim refuses to lose the only best friend he’s ever had - a person he’s known for less than a year, but who he's already sure he genuinely loves - to weirdness.

He decides the only thing he can do right now is drink, and hopefully wake up tomorrow hungover and with the problem magically figured out for him. He signals the robot barkeep for another round. “Bones? Another one? Two more of the same,” he orders without waiting for Bones’ answer, and it registers his request and blinks blue at them, turning to the dispenser to put their drinks together.

Bones is scanning the list of snacks available when Jim turns around, sensing a presence at his elbow, to find himself face to face with a beautiful apparition.

“Hi,” says the young woman, stirring her drink with a glow-in-the-dark straw. Her irises are also glowing silver, brighter than Bones’, like a bioluminescent fish; whether they’re contact lenses, color drops, or if she just isn’t quite as human as she looks, Jim doesn’t know. It’s a cool effect, whatever it is.

“Hi there,” he says, openly looking her up and down, letting her see he admires her getup. Not an inch of bare flesh is showing below her neck, but what she has on drapes over her curves like liquid, rows upon rows of tiny iridescent scales. He appreciates a look like that. Showing everything and nothing at the same time. It must have taken a year to make, if she’d done it by hand. “Pacifica, Enchantress of the Deeps. Nice costume.”

“Thank you. You don’t look so bad yourself, Major.” She sips her lime cocktail, then sets it down on the bar, neatly in the middle of a glowing coaster. “So I was wondering if Wind Elementia like to dance.”

He laughs. Assertive and to the point. Amid the tangled muddle of his thoughts and emotions, Pacifica’s clarity and straightforward intention is something he can’t help but appreciate. So what the hell - he’ll dance. “Sure do. Bones, you mind if I -”

“Go on,” Bones says, waving him off a little too quickly. He’s halfway into his fresh drink already. “Just don’t forget about me.”

And Jim doesn’t. He likes dancing, and he hasn’t for a while, so he goes, and they spin around on the packed dance floor for a few songs, maybe a little innocent grinding when the beat calls for it. But when Pacifica leans in and wonders shyly in his ear if he'd like to get out of there, Jim pauses with hands on her waist. His fingers twitch. Through a brief gap in the crowd he sees Bones, still leaning against the bar, looking a little lost and running a finger around the inside of his collar like he can’t wait to get it off, and Jim realizes that what his hands really want is over there.

A month ago he probably would have gone with her. Maybe even a week ago. But Bones had asked him not to forget about him, and he won’t. They’re still partners, after all.

Jim murmurs his apologies to Pacifica, who doesn’t look hurt and pats him on the shoulder before turning and finding a werewolf to dance with, and Jim picks his way back through the crush. Bones looks surprised when he sees him, which makes something twist guiltily in the pit of Jim’s stomach, but the expression quickly melts into a relieved-looking smile as he lifts his half-empty glass to Jim in a playful toast. Something new, maybe whiskey. He must be buzzed, too.

“Back early, Major,” he says, raising his voice to be heard as the song switches over to something with an even louder, pulsing beat. It’s in Japanese, and judging by the howl of approval that goes up from about half the crowd, it must be a popular one, though Jim doesn’t think he’s ever heard it before.

“Let’s get outta here and go somewhere quieter,” Jim shouts, and Bones raises his eyebrow so high his oculus starts to peel off at the upper edge.

“You sure? I thought you were havin’ fun. This is your crowd.”

“No, I’m sure. I’m getting a little tired, kind of a headache.”

They push their way through the deepening, gyrating crowd and out into the cool night, taking deep breaths of the fresh air and letting their ears adjust to the sudden comparative lack of noise: the smooth hiss of the maglev trains on their overhead tracks, the distant whoosh of aircraft, the wind over the darkened harbor beyond. Instead of jumping on one of the shuttle buses making the hotel circuit, they silently elect to walk. It isn’t too far for cadets with their conditioning, and Zeph and Adam both fortunately wear sturdy, practical boots.

Laughter echoes through the nighttime streets from scattered groups of revelers. Bones makes no sound at all for about ten minutes, and just as Jim is considering saying something inane just to save both of them, he finally speaks. “That sea princess woman really liked you.”

“She seemed to, yeah,” Jim answers uncomfortably.

“You could’ve gone with her, you know, if you wanted to. I wouldn’t’ve minded, long as you told me.”

“I didn’t want to. I brought you, and I wanted to leave with you,” says Jim, simply and honestly, and when he looks over, Bones is smiling down at the ground as he walks.

The silence is a little easier, this time.

***

When they get back, Jim helps Bones get his makeup off with the solvent, like he has every night. They’re hungry and halfway to drunk so they order some food from the synthesizer to sop up the alcohol in their stomachs, and Jim swipes through the photos on the con site on his padd, stopping when he reaches one from the costume contest. They look like a page from the comic book come to life, dynamic and like they’re having fun. “Look, Bones, it’s us.”

“Adorable,” Bones says through a mouthful of club sandwich, leaning back against the headboard. “What’s it say?”

“‘Iconic -’ I always thought they were pretty niche, guess not - uh, ‘iconic comic book partners Major Zeph and ‘Sharpshooter’ Adamovsky, known by fans as Zephsky, courtesy of San Francisco residents Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy.’”

“‘Zephsky’?”

“When two characters are in a relationship you crunch their names together, it goes back a long time,” says Jim without thinking, tongue loosened by the Risan wine. Then he realizes what he's said and winces. He hears the crinkle of Bones setting his sandwich down on the paper it came in. “Any kind of a relationship, not necessarily, y’know, sexual.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Like, Uhura and Gaila, they’d be...Gaihura? Which is terrible, never call them that. Or me and Admiral Nogura. Kirkura."

"Jim."

"Which could also be me and Uhura. Don’t tell her that either.” Great. He’s babbling now, and he can’t seem to stop himself.

“Jim,” says Bones, voice getting a fraction louder.

“Okay. Fine. Bones, when I was telling you about our characters, I left something out,” Jim admits.

Bones crosses his bare arms. “Which is?”

“Well, Adam and Zeph are partners.”

“Yeah, I knew that.”

“I mean, they’re _partners._ Not back in the early days, the ones I gave you, because, you know, but in the continuation...” Jim trails off, confused. Bones is smirking. Outright grinning, now, actually. It’s not an expression he sees on him often. “Why is your face doing that?” says Jim in honest alarm. “Am I in danger right now?”

“I _knew_ that, Jim,” Bones repeats gently. “You think I’d go off and play dress-up at a public event without knowing exactly who it was I’d be playing? I didn’t wanna make an ass of myself, or embarrass you. I did the research. I knew why Thor and Captain America were all gaga over us.” Oh. Jim feels his ears flood with heat at his own stupidity. Obviously Bones would have done the research. Bones did not become a double doctor at the age of twenty-nine because he blithely went along with whatever other people told him and never investigated anything. _Kirk, you idiot._

“And you know,” Bones adds, in a casual voice, though his eyes are still shining with humor, “I read the latest issue, the one where they blatantly confess their feelings for each other in the cave on Mars?"

Jim buries his face in his hands. “Stop.”

"And I could've sworn you sent the artist a holo of yourself. You didn't, did you? I still don't look like Sharpshooter but you really do look just like Zeph. His skull is _huge,_ like a boulder.”

“Stoooop, Bones.” He’s so fucking relieved that Bones is messing with him, he doesn’t care.

“Jim.” Bones’ hands are on him now, cupping the back of his head and stroking through his hair, peeling Jim’s own hands away from his face as Jim grins helplessly. “Jim, what would our stupid crunched-up name be?”

Jim looks sharply up at him at that, but finds nothing on Bones’ face but an expression of honest affection, maybe even love, that makes his heart skip a proverbial beat inside his ribcage.

“Our name? What do you mean?”

In answer, Bones brackets his face with his broad palms and kisses him. The Sharpshooter eyepiece bumps cool and smooth against his orbital bone. He pulls away, sees Jim is stunned and tilts his head and smiles and kisses him again for good measure. His kisses are closed but soft, almost reverent. Nobody’s ever put their mouth on Jim’s like that before, so carefully; through the haze of surprise it feels strangely more intimate than he might have expected.

Bones pulls away a fraction, and waits.

“Okay,” manages Jim after a moment. “We aren’t gonna talk about this first?”

“Far as I see,” Bones says, stroking Jim’s cheekbones soothingly with his thumbs, “I don’t need to if you don’t.”

“You don’t?”

“I think...” His eyes are dark and serious, not gray like Adam's but olive shot through with gold, one a little blurred from the oculus. “I think it was just...waiting. It just is. You don’t need to talk about something that just _is._ ”

“Take this off, then,” Jim says, voice a little unsteady, belying his own words by reaching up and pulling at the oculus himself. Bones winces as the edges peel away from his skin, the adhesive all too willing to give way even without solvent after a full day of body oils and sweat and dead skin cells. Jim thumbs at the circle of glue residue left behind, flaking it away from Bones’ cheek before leaning up and pressing his mouth to the spot. “I wasn’t expecting this,” he mumbles against Bones’ skin. “I swear. I just wanted us to be nerds together.”

“I hope you don’t just like me 'cause of my alter ego,” Bones chuckles.

“You’re you,” says Jim, running his hands through Bones’ darkened, gel-stiff hair. First thing he’ll do is get Bones into the shower and rinse it all out, because he wants to tangle his fingers properly in Bones’ regular old brown hair, really feel for himself whether it’s as silky as it looks. Maybe they won’t go to the CGI demo tomorrow morning. Maybe they’ll stay here instead. “The laser powers are just a perk.”

***

_Hi, Mom. Here’s a shot of Bones and me on stage at the costume contest. We placed top ten in the duo category. My hunch was right -- he was perfect. By the way, you know that picture of you with Dad as Thor in ‘27? Could you send it to me? I want to show him how you guys met. Thanks. Love, Jim._

***

When Leonard slowly comes to wakefulness, the sun is a high round disc behind the half-opaque window. Jim is propped up against a pillow, one hand stroking through Leonard’s hair like he’s petting a cat, the other dancing across the surface of the padd in his blanket-covered lap. Leonard closes his eyes and relaxes into the touch for a few minutes, enjoying it, and enjoying the knowledge that he doesn’t have to go anywhere for the moment.

“What’re you up to?” he asks after a while, voice gravelly with sleep.

“Planning next year’s costumes,” answers Jim fondly. “How do you feel about fedoras?”

“Uh...neutral to doubtful?” Leonard sits up and looks, his interest piqued. “Is that Harrison?”

“Might be.”

“Do I have to wear anything on my face?”

“Just this,” says Jim, scratching his fingertips over Leonard’s layer of morning stubble, then leaning over to follow the trail with his mouth. “Mm.” Leonard reaches up to pull him down properly by the back of the neck, and Jim rolls onto his hip and puts out an arm automatically to steady himself. There’s nothing on Leonard’s other side but empty air, though, and Leonard’s already precariously balanced on the edge of the mattress. He senses the fall coming, but that doesn’t stop it from hurting when they go over the edge in a flail of sheets and limbs, landing with an almighty thud the cadets a level down can probably feel. And an ominous ripping sound.

Turns out the five feet between two narrow single Academy beds feels more like five inches when two dazed full-grown men are tangled up in it, elbowing each other in their attempts to sit up and rubbing at their various bumps and bruises.

“For fuck’s sake.”

“Literally. This is not working,” Jim groans, flexing his wrist experimentally.

Leonard puts a hand to his head to see if he’s bleeding. “ _Now_ will you let me move into the postgrad dorms? Where I was supposed to be to begin with? Where the _double beds_ are?”

Jim sighs. “We won’t be roommates anymore if you do that.”

“Double. Bed.”

“KIRK. I’m coming in, nobody better be naked!” The door hisses open, and Gary Mitchell strides in, rounds the partition, sees a sheepishly-grinning Jim and a scowling Leonard sitting mostly nude on the floor, and immediately turns on his heel and goes back out again without a change in expression. “You did that on purpose,” he shouts over his shoulder as the door closes.

Leonard turns to Jim, unimpressed. A year in communal housing and he hasn’t learned to lock the damn door.

“Mitchell doesn’t live in the grad dorms,” he says pointedly.

“Deal,” replies Jim immediately, and they shake on it, Jim moving his injured wrist gingerly.

“Now. Grab me my kit and I’ll check that out.”

“If you grab me mine.” Jim holds up a length of the sheet they’d been lying under, and peeks at Leonard through a new ragged hole. Starfleet bedding is tough. But not that tough, apparently. “I might be able to fix this.”

All Leonard can do is laugh.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Any similarities to existing characters or names are due to the 2256 setting and not at all to the fact that I don't know anything about comics. (Nope.) Over the course of centuries, some things are remembered and some forgotten, some renamed and some retooled over and over again. There are a few instances of that happening in this story. If you spotted it, it was (probably) intentional!
> 
> Major Zeph is something like the spiritual offspring of Superman and The Doctor. He looks like Chris Pine but blonder. Sometimes he also looks like a tornado.
> 
> If The Winter Soldier left a cranky baby in a box on Clint Barton's doorstep, he would turn out to be Adam 'Sharpshooter' Adamovsky. He does not look like Karl Urban, but Karl Urban could probably play him.
> 
> I shouldn't have to explain who Nyota, Gaila, and the mysterious Obsidian Blade are.
> 
> Happy late holidays kinderjedi, and sorry this is so long! XD ♥


End file.
